This isn’t supposed to be what happens when you lose two starters to injury. When that happens, you’re supposed to crumble and be overwhelmed in a short series. You aren’t supposed to play even better and take a 3-1 series lead on last year’s Western Conference finalists.
The Injuries That Don’t Kill The Jazz Make Them Stronger In NBA Playoffs
But nothing about the Utah Jazz has been typical this season. Compare the team’s roster right now to its roster at the beginning of the year, and the team at the beginning of the year comes out on top on paper. It isn’t even close. The Jazz have lost Eric Maynor and Ronnie Brewer to trades, as well as Andrei Kirilenko and Mehmet Okur to injury, and they’re playing even better. It’s uncanny, really.
SB Nation’s Jazz blog SLC Dunk compares it to a real-life situation.
Losing Kirilenko and Okur seems to have had the same effect of losing one of your senses in that the others become a bit more sharpened. We’ve seen the rest of the team come together to play some of the most focused ball we’ve seen this season.
No sequence typified the Jazz’s season more than Kyrylo Fesenko’s two free throws to ice last night’s game. Fesenko is a much-maligned player, known more for his humor than his play. His primary on-court contribution during his career has been committing hard fouls, and he’s an awful free throw shooter. And yet, with his team needing him most, Fesenko has stepped up and delivered competent play, including those two big free throws. As SLC Dunk writes:
However, his two made FTs late in the fourth just might have been the play of the game. The Nuggets were keeping it semi-close late when Fess got hammered with just a little over two minutes to go. Those two free throws gave the Jazz a 111-100 lead. Why were they big? Because on the next possession, Anthony came down and nailed a three. Had he missed those, we would have had just a five-point game
He still has many facets to improve upon but with his play in this series, I don’t know how Sloan can’t play him more next season.
Kyrylo Fesenko, folks! If his “emergence” doesn’t sum up the Jazz’s season, I don’t know what does.
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